


They Say I'll Be Okay

by onyourleft1920



Series: One-Shots [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Angst, Depression, Grieving, M/M, Six Months Prior to 'Avengers', Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3993145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onyourleft1920/pseuds/onyourleft1920
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Here, in this place, only his ghosts kept him company anyways."</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Say I'll Be Okay

Thawing out from being frozen in the arctic took time. To do so safely, they’d had to use SHIELD technology, and he still died twice on that blasted table. But eventually, the ice had melted and his organs worked in proper order.  


It was his heart that he was struggling with at the moment.

He stared out of the window of the apartment that SHIELD had acquired for him, watching the world move around him. He hadn’t left the bed in days except to use the bathroom and drink some water (and even that had been a bit of a challenge). So he lay there, staring out of the window, curled up in the sheets that were too soft, on the bed that was too plush to be quite comfortable, and saw nothing. 

They called it depression. They called it PTSD. They called it so many other things that he didn’t even known the definitions for, but in the end it boiled down to one thing.

He was grieving. Finally.

And he hated it.

His hands fisted in the sheets and he curled inward on himself, on his side, pulling the sheets up over his head and hiding beneath the material to hide himself from the world. He hated this. Hated it with a passion. He should be stronger than this. He should be able to bounce back from this without a problem and be the leader that SHIELD wanted him to be. But he couldn’t even stomach the idea of climbing out of bed to eat. How was he supposed to lead a time into battle or complete a mission if the sound of screaming and wind rushing and trains going over tracks filled his ears?

A weight pushed its way up his throat, choking him. He swallowed deeply, closing his sunken eyes in an attempt to ground himself. But it was too much. It was finally too much. He was alone, completely alone in a world that had moved on without him. He had no family to cling to. He had no friends to grip tightly.

Oh, he knew Peggy was still alive. But she’d been diagnosed with something called Alzheimer’s and it broke Steve’s heart into pieces to realize that she was so lost within her mind. His eyes burned behind his closed lids and he took a deep, steadying breath.  


It was February now, snow falling in thick flakes outside. It terrified him, on a level that he couldn’t describe. It enraged him, fury singing swiftly through his body at the realization that it had been about this time of the year when he’d put that blasted plane into the water. Only two months after the death of his closest friend. Of his other half. He’d had nothing to give Bucky but a sketch of the two of them together. Bucky had given him a pocketknife, that sat on the bedside table now. Another reminder of what he’d lost.

He’d always loved Bucky Barnes. They were a single person sometimes, able to finish each other sentences, able to anticipate what the other needed. Codependency, was what the shrink had said when he’d tried to explain it. But it’d been more intimate than that, more meaningful, just more in general.

It hadn’t bothered him that Bucky had gone out with dames or even the occasional fella. He’d always come back to him, always came back to their ratty apartment, snuggled up behind a freezing Steve Rogers and wrapped himself around him like an overly affectionate octopus.

If he relaxed enough to almost sleep – which was a difficult place to get to, considering his nightmares – he could feel those limbs wrapped around him, feel the puff of breath between his shoulder blades, the press of Bucky’s forehead into the column of his neck. A sound escaped him at the thought, the ghostly sensation of comfort just out of reach and he curled in tighter on himself.

The burning in his eyes intensified, finally spilling past the barrier of his eyelids and down his cheeks, soaking his pillow. The weight in his throat sobbed itself out and broke something in him. Heartbroken and angry at a world he didn’t understand, at a world that he couldn’t comprehend without Bucky in it despite knowing that he’d been dead and gone a long time, he wept.

Since his ‘miraculous’ thawing, SHIELD and their operatives had been nothing but supportive. They tried to comfort him, offered him training to adapt to the 21st century and its differences, gave him a decent therapist (that he couldn’t communicate with and didn’t trust). They’d even found a priest for him to try to talk to, but Steve couldn’t bring himself to talk about it. About anything. So finally, after three weeks of stony silence and frequent requests to be released from the med center they had him in, they’d put him in this damned apartment.

Someone, he didn’t know who and he didn’t know if he wanted to thank them or bludgeon them to death with his bare hands, had found an old phonograph. He’d found an old music store that actually had records, bought a box load and listened to them for the first few days. It was one of the first (and certainly not the last) times that he’d been glad that there were no neighbors on either side of him.

Leaning against the wall next to the phonograph, Steve had been able to see the specter of Bucky, dancing in the living room. Alive. Vibrant. So full of zeal and spunk and moxy that he could barely stand it. Listening to those records, he could hear Bucky singing along to the music as he puttered around their old apartment, putting this away, or shining his shoes. He could feel those strong arms around him as he (fruitlessly) taught Steve to dance. He could smell the cologne he wore, and taste the whiskey on his lips as they kissed.

Now, curled up in misery on his bed, he was heartbroken. Unable to cope with anything. This was the future that Bucky had always imagined back in the day. Bucky had been a science fiction junkie, voraciously reading anything he could get his hands on about the future and technology. He’d have been absolutely agog at the 21st century.

But he was gone. He’d left Steve, alone and scared and broken. A reasonable sliver of his brain knew that being angry about it, about being angry at Bucky for dying wasn’t sane, wasn’t rational, but he couldn’t seem to reach beyond it. Beyond the aching loneliness, beyond the sorrow and sadness, there was a terrible rage. It ate at his belly, threatening to crawl into his very soul and settle there like a snake, coiled and ready to strike at any provocation.

Despite the warmth of the apartment, Steve shivered from the cold, from his tears and sobs. He couldn’t stand it. The cold. It was nothing but another reminder that everything was real. This was his present. This reality was what he had to deal with, alone. It ached in his teeth, in his heart, in his bones, the cold seeping in and he could almost feel the icy cold water flowing down his throat and sitting in his lungs. Drowning in it.

Oh God, he missed Bucky. Missed his laugh, missed his smile. Missed having someone to trust at his back. Missed his temper and pouts and their bickering. Missed his taste, the feel of him next to him, the texture of his hair. Missed the smell of his skin. It was agonizing, a constant throbbing pain deep in his core. He couldn’t talk about it, not to anyone. He didn’t want to admit to it.

Admit to purposely crashing that plane into the Arctic with every intention of dying. What was the point of life without Bucky? Bucky had inhabited every breath he took, made him who he was outside of the uniform. Made him Steve Rogers. Made him Captain America, made him **want** to be Captain America. Bucky had died for that, died for him. And he’d taken down those responsible for Bucky’s death, which had most definitely been a balm to his soul. But he’d drowned on purpose. He could have jumped out, he could have parachuted to safety and had a life back in the States when the war was over.

But he didn’t.

He’d chosen to meet Bucky in whatever afterlife that he could find him in. But there hadn’t been an afterlife. Instead there had been stillness and silence. An empty void that sucked him in and drowned him just as much as the icy water had. There’d been no relief of his pain, no relief from his sorrow.

There’d been no Bucky, either.

So he laid there, a freak out of an ice cube, tormented by ghosts that he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t move past them, move past him, in order to continue on. So he gripped them tightly, held them close to him and suffered. 

Here, in this place, only his ghosts kept him company anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> OMG I wibbled when I was writing this. Like really, because I completely connect with the kind of grief that Steve's experiencing here. This is Pre-Avengers, by the way, at least by six months or so. Now I need to write fluff or smut to be happy again. Please tell me what you think, I appreciate constructive criticism. I've never written in this genre before, I only roleplay in it so... -fidgets-


End file.
